A Palestinian media rights groups released a report on Thursday estimating that over 80 percent of Palestinian journalists practiced self-censorship.

The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms, or MADA, released a report of its findings following two studies and a meeting on self-censorship and its impact on freedom of expression and media in Palestine.

General director of MADA, Mousa Rimawi, said that self-censorship is the most “serious and dangerous kind of censorship” journalists face, noting that the practice began during Israel’s occupation, before the establishment of the Palestinian Authority.

Rimawi said that direct censorship by Israeli authorities during the First Intifada in the late eighties led to self censorship among Palestinian journalists as media outlets used different methods of circumventing Israeli media restrictions.

Self-censorship continued after the creation of the PA, Rimawi said, and has escalated “concretely and dangerously” since the split between Hamas and Fatah in 2007.

During a meeting entitled “Self-censorship: Is there a way to get rid of it?” dozens of journalists and media students were presented with the results of two studies by MADA which found that 80 percent of journalists surveyed practiced self-censorship on some or all of the material which they had written or produced.

Over 68 percent of journalists said that their work, or their colleagues work, had been banned from being published at one time or another by their employer.

Journalists also explained that self-censorship was not only related to official institutions, but is also related to fears that society and publishers are not willing to discuss taboo subjects.

In Dec. 2013, MADA released a statement documenting “worrying violations” against media freedoms in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The report mentioned several arbitrary arrests of journalists by PA forces in the West Bank and Hamas security forces in Gaza.

The post 80 Percent Of Palestinian Journalists Self-Censor appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy reiterated in Lower House of Parliament that it is “very difficult” to contract ebola and that Spanish healthcare professionals must receive support. He also advocated “full transparency” by the government on the “unlawful conduct” of financial institutions that have been intervened.

In response to a question from the General Secretary of the PSOE [Spanish Socialist Workers' Party], Pedro Sánchez, on how the disease from the Ebola virus is being handled, the Prime Minister underlined that “we must continue to persevere and support our professionals and many other people that form part of our public administration services who are working well, and that the situation is on the right track”.

Mariano Rajoy also stressed that, according to the medical staff, it is “very difficult” to contract the disease, since this only takes place through contact with fluids of those at an advanced stage of the illness”. “To date, only Teresa Romero can pass on this disease, as publicly announced by the Scientific Committee, and we hope that soon no-one will be in a position to pass it on, for the good of the Spanish people”, he added.

According to Rajoy, his government has fulfilled the priorities that he announced in the Lower House last Wednesday: the health of Teresa Romero, the supervision of those who have had contact with her and with the missionary Manuel García Viejo, “absolute support” for our healthcare professionals, information to the public and an investigation in to how it was contracted.

The post Spain: PM Rajoy Stresses Ebola Situation ‘Is On Right Track’ appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Nurzhanat Ametbek

Today is World Food Day. This year’s theme for this annual holiday is Family Farming: “Feeding the world, caring for the earth”. On 16 October 1945, 42 countries came together in Quebec, Canada to create the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). With the foundation of the FAO, a mechanism was established through which its member countries could deal with a set of problems that are of major concern to all countries and all people.

Xinhua news reported on 14 October that an estimated number of 842 million people worldwide are suffering from long term hunger; they cannot get enough food to sustain an active life. This group of people accounts for more than 1/8 of the world’s population. The global population is expected to rise from the current 7.2 billion to 8.1 billion in 2025, and to 9.6 billion in 2050 as reported by Xinhua. Each year, global food waste amounts to 1.3 billion tons, accounting for about 1/3 of global food productionAnnual economic losses that result from this food waste are estimated to be around $750 billion, in addition to the enormous damage to the environment they cause.

While the world is talking about World Food Day on this 16th of October, Turkey is busy dealing with a massive number of refugees that have found respite in its territory. Today it would be very meaningful to provide a brief review of Turkey’s situation regarding food security and the refugees.

Turkey’s population is relatively young. The annual average population growth rate was 1.7% for the 1995-2000 period. According to FAO Food Balance Sheets, Turkish people appeared to be well nourished. But maldistribution of food and quality are not properly demonstrated. When it comes to food, Turkey has the opportunity to provide for its population, allowing them to lead healthier and longer lives. Yet, the full attainment of this aim depends on the implementation of rational policies and management of resources.

In 2014, Turkey’s wheat crop suffered from drought in the autumn of 2013 followed by cold weather. Spring rains improved soil moisture but initial estimates from the Turkish Statistical Institute indicate a 10 percent decrease in cereal production in 2014 compared to last year, dropping the amount to about 33.8 million tonnes. The forecast also includes 19.8 million tonnes of wheat (an 11 percent decrease on last year) and 13.1 million tonnes of coarse grains (also a 10 percent decline).

In the 2014/15 marketing year (July/June), aggregate cereal imports, mainly wheat, are forecast to increase to 5.9 million tonnes (+17 percent) compared to last year’s 5 million tonnes. Likewise, cereal exports, mainly wheat flour and durum wheat, are forecast to decrease to 2.7 million tonnes, some 25 percent below average and below last year. Still, Turkey remains one of the leading exporters of wheat flour in the world, with Iraq and Indonesia being the main markets.

Latest figures from the Turkish Statistical Institute for July 2014 indicate an annual food inflation rate of 12.8 percent compared to a peak of 14.7 percent in May 2014. Earlier in 2014, food inflation averaged around 10 percent. In July 2014, the overall consumer price index stood at 9.3 percent.

Data from the UN Refugee Agency released on 11 Feb 2014 shows that more than 20,000 Syrian refugees have arrived in Turkey since the start of the year in the biggest influx since early 2013. Over recent days more than 500 people have been arriving daily across official crossing points, sometimes as many as 1,000-2,000 daily. According to Turkey’s Anadolu Ajansı, there are currently 2 million refugees in the country as of 6 October 2014. Construction of 7 of the 10 pre-fabricated health facilities procured by the UNHCR has started in refugee camps and urban areas in southeast Turkey the agency reported on 30 April 2014.

The post Turkey Grapples With Refugees On World Food Day – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

October 16, 2014, marks the 241st anniversary of an event that helped launch the American Revolution against King George III, eventually leading the thirteen colonies to independence from the British Empire. On that same fall day in 1773, the first public assembly to protest the Tea Act convened in Philadelphia. (The more famous Boston Tea Party took place two months later, on December 16.)

At first the Tea Act was less controversial than the Stamp Act, which had required colonists to buy and affix an official stamp on documents related to transferring real property, getting married, or legally enforcing other contractual obligations. However, the men who organized the public meeting about the Tax Act were deeply aggrieved by the Crown’s unilateral decision to export the “hated excise” to its North American colonies. Plans were afoot to block the unloading at Philadelphia of tea shipped on the Polly, but that plan later was aborted when news arrived that while en route the ship’s cargo had been dumped unceremoniously into the water when the vessel was docked in Boston Harbor.

The Philadelphia meeting’s main achievement was to appoint a twelve-man committee charged with asking Britain’s tea agents to resign their commissions. The Tea Act had awarded four firms exclusive rights to import tea into the colonies and imposed a duty (what today we usually call a “tax”) on those imports. The British agents were responsible for collecting the duty and for ferreting out and seizing tea shipments smuggled into America by tax evaders.

Selective excise taxes on distilled spirits, tea, coffee, salt, soap, and other goods had already been imposed in England. Those taxes were highly unpopular. Samuel Johnson, in his authoritative Dictionary of the English Language (1775), defined excise as “a hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by common judges of property, but by wretches hired by those to whom the excise is paid.”

Britain’s colonial tea agents were kissing cousins of the wretches who assessed and collected excise taxes on the other side of the pond. Rewarded for carrying out their responsibilities assiduously, the agents often entered private businesses and homes without permission to search for contraband on which taxes had not been paid. In that respect, the agents of the British excise-tax regime seem to have been no more considerate of private-property rights than the heavily armed SWAT teams who enforce today’s war on drugs.

In any case, the public meeting at Philadelphia on October 16, 1773, was one of the sparks that lit the fuse of the Revolutionary War. Perhaps less momentous than rebellion, the Tea Act also helped give Americans a taste for coffee, which Britain did not tax here.

But it also is important to recall that President George Washington’s first treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, reintroduced the hated excise not long after the victorious Rebels might have thought they had thrown off King George’s yoke for good. In order to help pay off debts the newly independent state governments had incurred during the Revolution, Mr. Hamilton convinced the president and Congress to agree to impose a selective excise tax on “ardent spirits.”

Hamilton’s action triggered the Whiskey Rebellion, which was quelled without loss of life only after President Washington personally led troops into western Pennsylvania to subdue the tax-protesting corn farmers. Nowadays, the hated excise is alive and well in the nation’s capital and state capitols nationwide.

Do not just “Remember, remember the fifth of November.” October 16th merits commemoration as well.

The post Happy Birthday, Tea Party! – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

A draft appeal to the UN General Assembly on the necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States against Cuba was introduced in Russia’s lower house, the State Duma, on Thursday.

“The State Duma is urging the United Nations General Assembly, the parliaments of Member States of the organization and international parliamentary organizations to call upon the United States of America to end the economic, commercial and financial blockade of the Republic of Cuba,” says the draft, prepared by the Duma’s Committee on Foreign Affairs.

For over 50 years the US economic, commercial and financial blockade of Cuba has been undermined the development of the country, which has the right to choose its own political, economic, social and cultural system, according to the document.

“In addition, the measures the United States has taken unilaterally bypass the UN, encroach on the rights and legitimate interests of Cuban nationals, residing in other countries, as well as third-country nationals,” the draft said.

The United States began its embargo on Cuba, which has become the longest economic blockade in history, on October 19, 1960, after Cuba nationalized properties belonging to US citizens and corporations.

The global community, including Washington’s allies Canada and the European Union, have long been opposed to the embargo. In 1996, Washington toughened the sanctions further by barring third countries’ commercial ships en route to and from the communist island from entering US ports.

The post Russian Lawmakers Draft Appeal To End US Blockade Of Cuba appeared first on Eurasia Review.

I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012 with US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

Last Thursday, out of the blue, Carol E. Lee and Jess Bravin of the Wall Street Journal reported that senior Obama administration officials had told them that the White House was drafting options that would allow President Obama to close the “war on terror” prison established by President Bush at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, through the use of an executive order.

Such an order would bypass lawmakers in Congress, who have imposed a ban on bringing prisoners to the US mainland since 2010, in response to President Obama’s proposal to transfer prisoners from Guantánamo to a maximum-security prison in Thomson, Illinois. Lawmakers have also passed legislation designed to make it difficult to release prisoners to other countries.

Reading on, it became apparent that this was only an option being considered. As the article explained, the officials said that President Obama “strongly prefers a legislative solution over going around Congress.” However, because, as one official said, the president is “unwavering in his commitment” to closing the prison, which he promised to close on his second day in office, he “wants to have all potential options available on an issue he sees as part of his legacy.”

That is good news for those of us who remain concerned that Guantánamo has not been closed, because every day the prison remains open is a profound shame for all Americans who believe in justice. We at “Close Guantánamo” have maintained, since President Obama first encountered problems with fulfilling his promise, that he must not waver, because failing to fulfil his promise would be a major black mark on his legacy — and all presidents, whatever they might say, care about how they are remembered.

The Wall Street Journal described executive actions as “a centerpiece” of the Obama administration’s policy agenda, “in areas including the minimum wage, anti-discrimination rules and, potentially, immigration,” although that seems to be something of an exaggeration. President Obama has, to date, issued 183 executive orders, while George W. Bush issued 291, Bill Clinton issued 364 and Ronald Reagan issued 381.

Nevertheless, it is fair to say, as the Wall Street Journal did, that an executive order on Guantánamo would be likely to “provoke a sharp reaction from lawmakers,” not only because of their ban on the transfer of prisoners to the US mainland, but also because some lawmakers are clearly motivated by a desire to keep Guantánamo open forever.

Steve Vladeck, a law professor at American University, said that unilateral action “would ignite a political firestorm, even if it’s the best resolution for the Guantánamo problem,” explaining that “Republicans are sure to oppose it, while Democrats could be split.”

The administration officials told the Wall Street Journal that, if Congress imposes further restrictions on Guantánamo after the mid-term elections in November, as is possible, President Obama only really has two options for closing the prison, either by vetoing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the annual bill establishing US military policy and funding, which includes the ban on bringing prisoners to the US mainland, or by signing the bill “while declaring restrictions on the transfer of Guantánamo prisoners an infringement of his powers as commander in chief, as he has done previously.”

The first option is unlikely, but the second is possible. As the Wall Street Journal explained, “Presidents of both parties have used such signing statements to clarify their understanding of legislative measures or put Congress on notice that they wouldn’t comply with provisions they consider infringements of executive power.”

The article also explained that, in the hope of stifling dissent, the administration intends to reduce the prisoner population by “quickly transferring” prisoners cleared for release. Of the 149 men still held, over half — 79 in total — have been approved for release, 75 by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama established in 2009 to review all the prisoners’ cases, and four this year through the deliberations of Periodic Review Boards, established to review the cases of the majority of the remaining 70 prisoners who were not approved for release by the task force.

58 of these men approved for release are Yemenis, whose release has been blocked because of fears, throughout the US establishment, about the security situation in Yemen — although, in theory, their release should be easier since President Obama dropped a personal ban on their release last May, which he had first imposed in January 2010, after a failed airline bomb plot that was hatched in Yemen.

The Wall Street Journal article coincided with an announcement, by the Estonian government, that one prisoner, who cannot be safely repatriated, will be given a new home in Estonia. US officials said that “additional transfers are in the works,” and it is to be hoped that six other men will be given new homes in Uruguay in the not too distant future, although that decision “is tied up in that country’s Oct. 26 presidential elections. The current president has agreed to accept the detainees, while his opponent has said he wouldn’t.”

Officials also said that they were hoping that releasing prisoners would reduce political opposition to the transfer of prisoners to the US mainland because it would highlight the cost of keeping Guantánamo open. The annual cost per prisoner is $2.7 million, compared to $78,000 per prisoner at a supermax prison on the mainland, but that cost will only increase as prisoners are released, because of the overall cost of maintaining the prison. A senior official said, “As the number [of prisoners] becomes smaller at Guantánamo, the case for domestic transfers … becomes that much stronger.”

Despite the hopes for the release of the 79 men approved for release, it is clear that Guantánamo cannot be closed until the 70 other prisoners are transferred to the US mainland. Last December, when lawmakers were prevailed upon to drop some of their restrictions on the release of prisoners, they refused to drop their ban on bringing prisoners to the US mainland for any reason, and this was clearly on President Obama’s mind in his State of the Union address this year, when he stated, bluntly, that “this needs to be the year Congress lifts the remaining restrictions on detainee transfers and we close the prison at Guantánamo Bay.”

The Wall Street Journal noted that officials said that President Obama “now expects to miss that deadline,” describing that as “a departure from earlier this summer when White House aides were still saying it was possible.” Complications have involved a cynical backlash by lawmakers and the right-wing media against the release, in May, of five Taliban prisoners in  a prisoner swap for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the sole US prisoner of war in Afghanistan, and the current anti-Muslim sentiment fueled by the US decision to engage with ISIS militants in Iraq and Syria.

Speaking of transferring prisoners to the US mainland, officials said the US “has ample space in its prisons for several dozen high-security prisoners,” and explained that the administration “has reviewed several facilities that could house the remaining detainees, with the military brig at Charleston, S.C., considered the most likely.”

Following the publication of the Wall Street Journal article, the White House moved to distance itself from the reports by administration officials. As the Guardian described it, White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said, “Since the president came into office in 2009 the administration has been examining all possible ways we could get to closure of the facility, but we are not drafting options to override the law. We are continuing to work on transfers [of prisoners] and calling on Congress to lift restrictions.”

The caution is understandable, as John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, said in response to the article, “Even as Islamic jihadists are beheading Americans, the White House is so eager to bring these terrorists from Guantánamo Bay to the United States that it is examining ways to thwart Congress and unilaterally re-write the law.”

However, I do believe it is useful to consider that the executive order was mentioned to try to appeal not to fearmongers and cynical opportunists like Boehner, but to decent Americans — in Congress, in the media, and throughout the country in all walks of life — who recognize that something is profoundly rotten at Guantánamo, and that it must be brought to an end before President Obama leaves office, and this, of course, is something that, at “Close Guantánamo,” we wholeheartedly endorse.

What you can do now

To show your support of President Obama’s promise to close Guantánamo — and if you wish, to endorse an executive order as the only means of doing so, if Congress remains implacably opposed to the closure, on cynical grounds — call the White House on 202-456-1111 or 202-456-1414 or submit a comment online.

You can also call the Department of Defense and ask Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to issue certifications, as required by Congress, for prisoners cleared for release who are still held: 703-571-3343.

You can also call Cliff Sloan, the envoy for the closure of Guantánamo at the State Department, who was appointed by President Obama last year, to ask him to do more to secure the release of men long cleared for release: 202-647-4000.

The post Is President Obama Planning Executive Order For Closure Of Guantánamo? – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The need for food, animal feed and fuel in the Sahel belt is growing year on year, but supply is not increasing at the same rate. New figures from 22 countries indicate falling availability of resources per capita and a continued risk of famine in areas with low ‘primary production’ from plants. Rising temperatures present an alarming prospect, according to a study from Lund University in Sweden.

The research has investigated developments between the years 2000 and 2010 in the Sahel belt, south of the Sahara Desert. Over this ten-year period, the population of the region grew from 367 million to 471 million. With this, the need for food, animal feed and fuel increased significantly. According to the study, the rate of increase was 2.2 per cent a year over the ten-year period.

“However, the production of crops did not increase at the same rate; in fact, it remained essentially unchanged”, said Hakim Abdi, a doctoral student in physical geography and ecosystem science at Lund University.

According to the study, this is a worrying trend in the light of climate change and population forecasts of close to one billion people in the region by 2050. The situation means that the margin between supply and demand for primary production is shrinking year on year.

In order to analyse the trend, the researchers used remote analysis and satellite images to calculate annual crop production in 22 countries in the Sahel region, and compared the figures with socioeconomic data on population growth and consumption of food, animal feed and fuel. The relationship between these two factors – primary production and consumption – serves as a measure of the vulnerability of a region from a socioecological perspective.

The results of the study show that consumption in the year 2000 comprised 19 per cent of total primary production in the area. Ten years later, consumption had increased to 41 per cent of total primary production.

A key question in this context is how long the margin can continue to shrink. The researchers noted that the region is already under pressure because of its susceptibility to drought, as demonstrated by a long series of famines over recent decades. Climate change further increases the vulnerability of the Sahel, in the view of the researchers. According to a number of different forecasts, harvests will be reduced as a result of higher air temperatures, despite the fact that the Sahel is predicted to receive more rain in the future.

The post Shrinking Resource Margins In Sahel Region Of Africa appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The Catalan independence movement became a mass phenomenon when the first large Diada (National Day of Catalonia) demonstration took place and CiU (Convergence and Union) committed to a referendum. Researchers from the Autonomous University of Barcelona have published an article in the journal ‘South European Society and Politics’ on the causes of the rapid move of a substantial proportion of the Catalonian public towards the independence movement, which had previously enjoyed support only in minority sectors of the population.

Catalonian secessionism rose from 19% in 1991 to 41% in 2012, according to a study by researchers at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, drawn up based on polls conducted by the Centre for Sociological Research (CIS), the Institute of Political and Social Sciences (ICPS) and the Centre of Opinion Studies (CEO).

The authors of the study analysed the factors behind the fact that this separatist sentiment has doubled in Catalonia in recent years.

As Guillem Rico, who, together with Robert Liñeira, co-authors the study published in the journal ‘South European Society and Politics’, tells SINC: “The Statute of Autonomy sentence is what puts Catalonia’s political system in a new context. However, we believe that this change acts together with the more general economic and political crisis. The result is that people’s dissatisfaction with the state of affairs achieves expression, in part, via the independence movement. Spain is now an increasingly less attractive option for growing sectors of the population.”

Furthermore, according to the researchers, this particular effect of the crisis in Catalonia would not have come to pass without the pre-existence of a clear, alternative national plan in Catalonia, or without the institutional crisis related to the failed process of the Statute.

“With the data available, it is not easy to determine exactly when to place the turning point resulting in separatism becoming the preferred option in Catalonian public opinion. In any case, this did not happen before 2010, when the Constitutional Court’s sentence against the Statute was announced, and it increased its scope in 2012 with the first large-scale Diada demonstration, when Convergència i Unió (CIU, Convergence and Union) committed to a referendum,” they affirm.

For the experts, it is not so much that the drawing up of the Statute boosted the independence movement; rather, both processes were a reflection of a growing demand for self-government.

The authors argue that: “A new Statute could have satisfied these demands, but it is precisely its failure that sparks off a change in strategy by sectors that advocate increased self-government.”

Furthermore, the competition between CiU and Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC, the Republican Left of Catalonia), – as well as that of other parties that appear as the process goes on – intensifies the positions. “Especially important is the central role that ERC, until then the only pro-independence formation, gains thanks to the parliamentary arithmetic during the preparation and passing of the new Statute,” the researchers add.

Moderate nationalism intensifies

The latest polls indicate that the population that feels “more Catalan than Spanish” – as opposed to those who feel “more or only Spanish” or “only Catalan” – is the sector that has most clearly changed its position towards secessionism. CiU sympathisers are much more enthusiastic about independence than they were in the past.

“Secessionism is growing amongst those who feel only Catalan, where it already enjoyed majority support, and those who feel more Catalan than Spanish, where it did not but now does. Although it has also grown in other groups, the independence movement is only the preferred choice for the former,” the researchers comment.

Additionally, the study highlights the fact that the latest regional elections boasted the historical maximum participation, even exceeding the preceding general elections. “This proves that issues of the utmost importance are being settled regionally and this is being perceived by the people,” Rico concludes.

As regards the matter of Catalonia’s growing distance from the rest of Spain (whether within or outside it), the data from the polls undertaken for this study show no clear sign so far that popular support for independence is diminishing.

“The next steps of the key actors involved are still unclear, but these will be crucial to discerning the evolution of the secessionist wave and the parties’ electoral fates,” the study finally underlines.

The post Secessionism In Catalonia Went Mainstream In 2012 appeared first on Eurasia Review.

President Barack Obama insisted Wednesday that the US response to the Ebola outbreak is effective and that the chances of the deadly virus taking hold in the United States are “extremely low.”

Concerns about health protocols have grown since two nurses that looked after Thomas Eric Duncan, who died of the disease, contracted the virus. Duncan was infected with Ebola in Liberia, where he is from, and then took a flight to the US.

Obama told reporters after a hastily convened meeting with 20 senior White House officials, including Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Vice-President Joe Biden and Attorney-General Eric Holder, that he himself had close contact with health workers treating Ebola patients while visiting Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and felt safe doing so.

“I shook hands with, hugged and kissed not the doctors, but a couple of the nurses at Emory, because of the valiant work they did in treating one of the patients. They followed the protocols, they knew what they were doing, and I felt perfectly safe doing so,” said the president.

Obama said it wasn’t like the flu virus, which can be transmitted in the air through coughs and sneezes.

He said he was “absolutely confident” that there will not be a serious outbreak of Ebola in the US, but stressed that it will become increasingly difficult to control the epidemic if it is not dealt with at its source in West Africa.

The president held video conferences with the French, British, German and Italian leaders on Wednesday to discuss the international response to the outbreak.

But clearly the protocols were not stringently adhered to in the nursing of Duncan and Obama admitted that officials would be looking at every step of the way Duncan was looked after.

It has already emerged that the second nurse infected with the disease violated protocol after the Center for Disease Control (CDC) announced Wednesday that she had boarded a commercial flight from Cleveland to Dallas the day before she started getting symptoms.

They also suggested that one of the nurses looking after Duncan may not have been issued with the right protective clothing and that in future they would make sure that healthcare workers have the right training and equipment.

While on Tuesday the nurses union National Nurses United said in a press conference that the strict protocols were not in place at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas where Duncan was first treated.

Obama said that now “SWAT teams” from the CDC would be deployed within 24 hours to a hospital that reports a new case of Ebola, so that smaller, non-specialized establishments that don’t have experience of dealing with the disease know what to do.

Meanwhile a growing number of lawmakers have been calling on the president to introduce a travel ban to and from the West African countries at the center of the Ebola crisis.

“A temporary ban on travel to the United States from countries afflicted with the virus is something that the president should absolutely consider along with any other appropriate actions as doubts about the security of our air travel systems grow,” House Speaker John Boehner said in a statement Wednesday afternoon.

The post Obama: I ‘Hugged And Kissed’ Ebola Nurses appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Salma Malik

After a much-deliberated stalemate, Afghanistan finally had a new democratic government with a power-sharing arrangement. The signing of the controversial Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) provides a false sense of security to many who felt that the US military must not pull out completely as the perceived regional proxies would turn Afghanistan into a complete proxy battlefield.

Though Pakistan has time and again reiterated its policy of non-interference and non-intervention in Afghan internal affairs, the same cannot be said about other regional actors. That will add to complicating the bilateral equation further. Another moot point is the Durand line, which always carries the potential to ignite fiery exchanges of passionate and politically loaded rhetorics and on rare instances, exchange of firepower. However, the more volatile of the “unofficial” boundaries has been the Line of Control (LoC) and working boundary on the eastern border, which has over the years, successfully become a testing field of India-Pakistan relations. Like any and all bilateral arrangements between the two neighbors, the 2003 ceasefire agreement regarding the LoC has also been blatantly violated in the past several years.

With both elected governments in Pakistan and India being driven by economics, the general perception was that even if there is no substantial progress on the bigger problem areas, at least both administrations will try and maintain congenial relations and move towards progressive engagement. However the first sign of trouble was the calling-off of the Augus 2014 foreign secretary level talks after Pakistan’s high commissioner to India met with the Kashmiri leadership.

Interestingly, anyone familiar with the New Delhi diplomatic setup and the grand receptions held would actually find a much greater number and variety of Kashmiri leadership in attendance, brushing shoulders with all and sundry.

Sensitivities aside, if seriously committed to the process, a better approach could have been registering a well-worded protest and allowing the talks to proceed as per schedule. However, several times in the past too, much investment has been made in holding a meeting than making it meaningful. What if the meeting had proceeded as per schedule? There is little doubt that nothing substantial would have resulted from the parleys. Despite a much clearer vision regarding what Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants regarding internal growth and development and a foreign policy to match with it, there was a somewhat vague gesturing vis-à-vis relations with Islamabad. Although, during his election campaigning Modi and his party had been vocally very anti-Pakistani, yet the very brief period of positive overturing soon after elections, gave space for optimism that perhaps things might be on the mend.

The recent round of cross-LoC fire resulting in substantial infrastructural damage as well as heavy civilian fatalities on either sides of the LoC and working boundary, has again brought out media histrionics seeking death to Pakistan and dealing the enemy (Islamabad) a crushing decisive blow. Where on one hand it makes the Modi government’s policy towards its neighbor clear, it also retards the process (whatever it may be) substantially.

A recent statement by the new-kid-on-the-block, Bilawal Bhutto, regarding wresting the entire Kashmir from India got a knee-jerk reaction from across the border. Interestingly, one set of replies was hacking of the Pakistan Peoples Party web site by an Indian group which posted propaganda stuff with inflammatory statements. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif too, much to New Delhi’s displeasure highlighted the plight of Kashmiris at the recently concluded UNGA session in New York. Immediately, conspiracy theorists hinted at a silent pledge between Sharif and Modi regarding silence over the K-word.

However, what has intentionally been forgotten in this entire conflict narrative is the plight of flood-affected Kashmiri population, which has suffered loss of lives and livelihood.

Cross-LoC fire has unfortunately become a barometer of India-Pakistan relations. Sooner or later the guns will fall silent, after claiming many lives both civilian and military, with unpleasant words exchanged and angry gesturing at the political level. In the worse-case scenario, it may require a higher level of deployment, but that is highly unlikely. What it will claim in its wake is a chunk of peace, and a window of opportunity to act wisely by either side and discuss the problem, rather than indulging in blind rage and provocative statements.

Although New Delhi does not accord the same status to UNMOGIP than Pakistan, the latter’s proposal of making this office more proactive may not be a bad idea. Apparently, sticking to bilateralism and seeking a third party’s role behind the curtains which results in crisis stability has become a norm for the two neighbors. The current crossfire, while may apparently look like a good marketing strategy – with Modi allegedly approving an all-out assault – will further fracture the already fragile base on which “conditional” peace stands. If either side is genuinely interested in peace, there is a need for reviewing both policies and postures.

Salma Malik
Assistant professor, Defence and Strategic Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University

The post India-Pakistan: Working Boundaries And Lines Of Uncontrolled Fire – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Louise Højen

Thirty-four defense ministers from the Western hemisphere attended the 11th Conference of the Defense Ministers of the Americas (CDMA) in Arequipa, Peru from October 12-14. Among the ministers was United States (U.S.) Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel.[1] Prior to this conference, Secretary Hagel traveled to Colombia and Chile to strengthen existing ties, though no one could describe him as a long-time leader in Latin American affairs.

Hagel arrived to Colombia on October 9 to meet with President Juan Manuel Santos and Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzón. The visit reaffirmed diplomatic relations and continued U.S. support for Colombia’s peace negotiations with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla movements. Furthermore, as emphasized by Hagel, Colombia’s ongoing development in exporting military security expertise to more than forty nations make it a significant partner to the U.S. on security matters.[2] In their meeting, special attention was given to the security threat posed by the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria.[3] On October 11, Hagel went to Chile to meet with President Michelle Bachelet, Foreign Minister Heraldo Muñoz, and Defense Minister Jorge Burgos. This year, Chile and the U.S. celebrated the 10th anniversary of the U.S.- Chile Free Trade Agreement. The U.S. is eager to expand its relations with Chile by deepening their collaboration on matters of security and international peace building. Additionally, Hagel applauded Chile’s impressive leadership in search and rescue cooperation in the region.[4] During the CDMA conference in Peru, which began on October 12 and ended on October 14, Hagel visibly tried to reinforce bilateral and multilateral relations with other Latin American countries. For instance, he expressed his admiration for the Mexican military, an important U.S. partner in the hemisphere.[5]

The agenda of the conference focused on four subjects. First, strengthen the role of CDMA ministries of defense for coordinating inter-American military collaboration; second, optimize the quality of military health systems; third, improve the cooperation in search and rescue capacities in the region; and fourth, discuss the possible participation of Armed Forces in environmental protection.[6] Surprisingly, though drug trafficking and organized crime are major longstanding problems in Latin America, these items were not discussed at the conference. This seemed to be an extraordinary omission, considering the mass-influx of undocumented Central American children to the U.S. this past summer, who fled violent communities marked by organized crime.

Other matters pertinent to the region not on the agenda included the infamous, unpopular U.S. War on Drugs and the U.S. War on Terror. These U.S. efforts have been heavily deployed in Colombia, the Andean region, and Central America. On October 8, Rear Admiral Kirby from the U.S. Pentagon declared that Secretary Hagel would, “stress the United States’ commitment to partnerships that strengthen national defense institutions and confront hemispheric security challenges, including ungoverned spaces, organized crime, and narcotics trafficking.”[7] However, Hagel’s prepared speech for the CDMA Conference on October 13 focused on the climate challenges facing the hemisphere, and did not mention crime, drugs, or related human rights violations.[8]

There is widespread acknowledgement that the U.S. War on Drugs has been a failure. Various newspapers, scholars, and organizations around the world have criticized this U.S. effort, including The New York Times, Noam Chomsky, and Amnesty International. Oliver Villar and Drew Cottle critically reviewed the U.S. War on Drugs and its impact on Latin America in 2011 through their book, based on ten years of research, titled, “Cocaine, Death Squads and the War on Terror: U.S. Imperialism and Class Struggle in Colombia”.[9]

Ultimately, the 11th CDMA conference explored significant topics. However, there comes a point when the U.S. government will need to publicly address the more controversial military and security issues currently troubling Latin America. These topics either must be on the 12th CDMA agenda, or be discussed beforehand so the U.S. can address the lasting effects of its involvement in these matters. The U.S. should not excise such significant talking points from the speeches delivered by its officials. There must be broad multilateral cooperation if the entire region is to move into an era of peace and prosperity.

Louise Højen, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

References

[1] CDMA Webmaster. “XI CDMA will take place in Arequipa – Peru between October 12th and 14th of 2014,“ The Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas, September 30, 2014. Accessed October 14, 2014: http://www.cdmamericas.org/home/news-announcements

More on the forum on their official website: http://www.cdmamericas.org/home/who

[2] John D. Banusiewicz. ”Hagel Reaffirms U.S. Commitment to Partnership With Colombia,” U.S. Department of Defense, October 11, 2014. Accessed October 14, 2014: http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=123389

[3] Sean Lengell. ”Chuck Hagel: Colombia is key ally in fighting Islamic State,” Washington Examiner, October 11, 2014. Accessed October 14, 2014: http://washingtonexaminer.com/chuck-hagel-colombia-is-key-ally-in-fighting-islamic-state/article/2554679

[4]John D. Banusiewicz. “Hagel, Chilean Leaders Discuss Deepening Partnership,” U.S. Department of Defense, October 12, 2014. Accessed October 14, 2014: http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=123392

[5] Anonymous. ” Hagel Praises Mexico’s Military in Meeting With Defense Minister,” The Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas, October 14, 2014. Accessed October 15, 2014: http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=123404

[6] CDMA Webmaster. “XI CDMA – Perú 2014,“ The Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas, October 3, 2014. Accessed October 14, 2014: http://www.cdmamericas.org/home/news-announcements/xicdmawilltakeplaceinarequipa-perubetweenoctober12thand14thof2014

[7] Rear Adm. Kirby. ” Department of Defense Press Briefing by Rear Admiral Kirby in the Pentagon Briefing Room,” U.S. Department of Defense, October 8, 2014. Accessed October 14, 2014: http://www.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=5516

[8] Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel’s speech is accessible through: CDMA Webmaster. “XI CDMA – Perú 2014,“ The Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas, October 14, 2014. Accessed October 14, 2014: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=Y2RtYW1lcmljYXMub3JnfG1haW58Z3g6NGUxZWFiYWQyZjZjNzZk

[9] Oliver Villar and Drew Cottle. Cocaine, Death Squads and the War on Terror, U.S. Imperialism and Class Struggle in Colombia, New York: Monthly Review Press, 2011.

The post Secretary Of Defense Hagel Meets With Latin American Leaders – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The debates within the jihadist community in the conflict zones of Syria and Iraq influence contemporary jihadists around the world into making tactical choices. Analysing and studying their reception and influence are useful for predicting their trajectories. These provide options for counter-terrorism efforts.

By Robi Sugara

ON 11 AUGUST 2014, a number of board members of the Jamaah Ansharut Tauhid (JAT) left the group and declared the formation of a new outfit named Jamaah Ansharu Shariah (JAS) in Bekasi, West Java. The new group was formed in reaction to Abu Bakar Ba’asyir’s decision to pledge allegiance (baiah) to the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group.

The split was prompted by Ba’asyir’s call that JAT members who do not support and offer the baiah to the IS should leave JAT. Ba’asyir, a founder and leader of JAT and a co-founder of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) group has been serving an imprisonment term since 2011.

Early split of Jihadist groups

The dissension among Indonesian jihadists intensified following the declaration by self-styled Caliph of the Muslims, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on 29 June 2014 that the IS was a full-fledged state. Four names emerged from this split: Abu Muhammad Al Maqdisi, Sulaiman bin Nashir Al-Ulwan, Athiyatullah Al-Libbi, Husain bin Mahmud, who is another important Al Qaeda ideologue.

All of them criticised and opposed Al-Baghdadi because they saw IS as being unable to adequately protect Muslims given that supporters of IS are now found in as well as outside IS; these supporters are even getting threats from Muslim and secular countries. In addition, the declaration of Al-Baghdadi as Caliph was not through an electoral process involving ahlul halli wal aqdi (a council of Muslim scholars) which therefore renders Al-Baghdadi’s IS invalid in the eyes of Islamic law.

The disagreement among Indonesian jihadists, which occurred before the declaration of the IS, was prompted by the fact that the al-Baghdadi group had set itself up against other jihadist entities. A case in point was IS’ beheading of Abu al-Miqdam, a commander of the Al Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al Nusrah.

Due to its extreme brutality including against fellow Muslims, many Islamic scholars have argued that the IS was no different from the Kharijites, a heterodox group in early Islamic history known for its extremism and atrocities. As such, despite substantial ideological confluences, many jihadists did not instinctually align themselves with the group.

Responses of Indonesian jihadists

Developments in political Islam and jihadism in the rest of the Muslim world hold sway over the Muslims in Indonesia. The influence could extend to the adoption of sides in the internal debates among terrorist organisations. One instance is the difference of opinion between Abdullah Azam, the father of global jihad, and Osama bin Laden, the founder of Al Qaeda, on who constituted the enemy to Muslims today.

Azam had argued for the setting up of an Islamic state in Afghanistan and for Mujahidins to move to Palestine to liberate Muslims from Israeli occupation, while jihadists from the Asian region could start a war to overthrow their secular regimes. At the same time, Osama called on Muslims to attack America and its allies everywhere. At the time, jihadists in Indonesia who were privy to the debates aligned themselves with one or the other: Azam or Osama.

On the one hand, some JI members followed Osama’s call in attacking the ‘far enemy’, the Americans. Indeed Ali Imron, a Bali bomber, had argued that the Bali bombings of 2002, which caused 202 deaths, were in pursuit of this call. On the other hand, other JI members chose to mount attacks against the near enemy of the secular Indonesian state. The significance of the debate on ‘near enemy’ vs. ‘far enemy’ was not fully appreciated by the Indonesian authorities at the time.

Currently, the disagreements between the IS and Al Qaeda have quite expectedly aroused interest in Indonesia’s jihadist community. Annajah magazine, for instance, which promotes the JI ideology, posted on its magazine articles that criticised the IS. Arrahmah media, which the convicted terrorist Muhammad Jibril Abdurrahman fronts, is explicit in its rejection of Al-Baghdadi. In fact, the Indonesian Mujahidin Council (MMI), a splinter group of the JI initially led by Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, went as far as to suggest that the IS was a conspiracy by the Shiites and Jews to destroy Islam.

Support for IS has been often voiced by Aman Abdurahman whom many consider as a leader of the terrorist group Tawhid wal Jihad, also known as ‘Takfiri Group’. Aman has been serving nine years imprisonment for terrorism since 2010. Support for IS has also been expressed by newer as well as youthful groups such as FAKSI, the Forum of Shariah activists which has been very aggressive in campaigning for IS.

On 6 July 2014 for instance, the group managed to gather about 600 people at a ceremony in the Islamic State University (UIN Syarif Hidayatullah) of Jakarta to pledge allegiance to IS.

Appreciating internal debates in counter-terrorism

Ba’asyir eventually also pledged fealty to the IS, albeit not uneventfully. Many JAT members including Ba’asyir’s son, Abdulrochim Ba’asyir alias Iim, criticised Ba’asyir for doing so. In fact, Iim had characterised JAT’s decision as being engaged in a “temporary euphoria”. Others claim that JAT people who support IS constituted about five percent among thousands of JAT members spread across Indonesia.

Indonesia has a long history of jihadism. It may be traced back to the Darul Islam movement that became active more than half a century ago when the nation was fighting for its independence. Yet the jihadi movement is not monolithic. Much of its heterogeneity may be attributed to the fact that the Indonesian jihadi movement did not only develop organically but have been influenced by jihadi discourses, strategies and tactics emanating from the Middle East.

Whenever such cross-pollinations happen, we can expect a split in a jihadist group to occur. Such a split then provides an understanding of the unfolding threat of terrorism in Indonesia. Indeed, developments in local terrorist strategies and tactics have been invariably influenced by the broader global jihadist movement today.

The analysis of a fracture in a jihadi group provides an indication of the trajectory of jihadist movements in Indonesia, which will in turn enable authorities to respond to the threat of terrorism strategically.

Robi Sugara previously served as editor-in-chief of the Indonesian political magazines, Barometer and Nusa. He is currently pursuing a M.Sc. in Strategic Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University.

The post New Map Of Indonesian Jihadists: Pro-IS And Non-IS? – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The Brent-WTI spread, the difference between the front month futures price of North Sea Brent crude oil and that of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil, narrowed to $2.00 per barrel (bbl) as of October 15, after reaching a 2014 high of $14.95/bbl in January (Figure 1). The spread declined in the first quarter of the year primarily as a result of changes to crude oil infrastructure in North America which caused WTI prices to rise. The spread averaged $6.53/bbl from March through September.

The more recent narrowing of the spread since September is largely the result of declining Brent prices caused by a combination of lower demand and increased supply. Economic growth in Asia and Europe has been lower than expected. Sustained increases in Libyan crude oil production plus higher U.S. crude production that has backed out U.S. imports are raising crude supply in the global market.

Changes in the Brent-WTI spread not only reflect the relative strength or weakness in the markets for Brent and WTI, but the spread also affects the prices of many other types of crude oil that use these two crudes as reference points, or benchmarks, for establishing market prices.

A benchmark crude is a specific crude oil that is widely and actively bought and sold, and to which other types of crude oil can be compared to determine a price by an agreed-upon differential. The agreed-upon differential takes into account a number of factors, including quality characteristics such as API gravity or sulfur content, transportation costs from production areas to refineries, and regional and global supply and demand conditions, including refinery utilization. Use of the benchmark makes it easier for buyers and sellers to price the variety of crudes that are produced around the world.

The most widely used benchmarks are associated with crude oil that has stable and ample production; a transparent, liquid market located in a geopolitically and financially stable region to encourage price discovery; adequate storage to encourage market development; and/or delivery points at locations that allow arbitrage opportunities in world markets so that prices reflect global supply and demand.

Brent and WTI are two of the major crude oil benchmarks in the world. Dubai/Oman is a third.

Brent, which is the most widely used global crude oil benchmark, includes four separate light, sweet crude streams that are produced in the North Sea: Brent and Forties (produced offshore the United Kingdom) as well as Ekofisk and Oseberg (produced offshore Norway). In 2013, Brent crude oil loadings averaged 0.86 million barrels per day (bbl/d), representing about 1% of total world crude oil production of 76 million bbl/d. Brent is used to price light, sweet crude oil that is produced and traded not only in Europe, the Mediterranean, and Africa, but also in Australia and some countries in Asia.

WTI is a light, sweet crude oil produced in the United States that is priced at the crude oil trading hub of Cushing, Oklahoma. WTI is used as a benchmark for other types of crude oil produced in the United States, such as Mars, a medium, sour crude produced in the Gulf of Mexico, and Bakken, a light, sweet crude produced in North Dakota. WTI is also used as a benchmark for imported crude oil that is produced in Canada, Mexico, and South America.

Dubai/Oman is a third major benchmark crude. The prices of Dubai and Oman crude, both of which are medium, sour, are often averaged together to create a benchmark that is typically used to price crude oil produced in the Middle East and exported to Asian markets. Dubai crude oil production has steadily declined for more than two decades, and in 2013 was only 34,000 bbl/d. As a result, Oman crude oil, which reached 940,000 bbl/d of production in 2013, has been used to support the continued use of Dubai crude as a benchmark. Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco, uses the Dubai/Oman benchmark when determining the price of its crude oil sold for delivery to Asia. Brent and Dubai crude oil prices tend to be correlated, in part through the Brent/Dubai Exchange of Futures for Swaps, a highly traded, over-the-counter instrument that allows traders to convert to and from a Brent crude oil futures contract and a comparable forward month Dubai crude oil swap (Figure 2).

Like the Brent-WTI spread, the Brent-Dubai/Oman (Brent-Dubai) spread has narrowed in 2014 as the price of Brent has declined. As this spread narrows, Brent and Brent-priced crudes, like the West African crudes Bonny Light and Qua Iboe produced in Nigeria, become more competitive in Asian markets compared with Middle East crudes, like Arab Light. Saudi Aramco recently announced that it would lower the November 2014 differential to the Dubai/Oman benchmark for Arab Light crude oil delivered to Asia. As a result, Arab Light crude will price at a discount to the Dubai benchmark for a second consecutive month, which has not happened since the end of 2010.

GASOLINE AND DIESEL FUEL PRICES DECREASE

The U.S. average price for regular gasoline as of October 13, 2014 was $3.21 per gallon, down nine cents from the previous week, and 15 cents less than the same time last year. The Midwest led the decline, down 11 cents to $3.08 per gallon, while the Gulf Coast followed with a decrease of 10 cents to $3.01 per gallon. The Rocky Mountain average dropped nine cents to $3.34 per gallon. The East Coast price decreased eight cents to $3.23 per gallon, while the West Coast fell seven cents to $3.54 per gallon.

The U.S. average diesel fuel price decreased four cents this week to $3.70 per gallon, 19 cents less than the same time last year, and the fifteenth consecutive week of flat or declining prices. The Rocky Mountain, East Coast, and West Coast prices all declined four cents, to $3.75 per gallon, $3.71 per gallon, and $3.89 per gallon, respectively. Both the Midwest and Gulf Coast prices decreased three cents to $3.64 per gallon.

PROPANE INVENTORIES RISE

U.S. propane stocks increased by 0.7 million barrels last week to 81.4 million barrels as of October 10, 2014, 14.9 million barrels (22.4%) higher than a year ago. East Coast inventories increased by 0.3 million barrels and Gulf Coast inventories increased by 0.2 million barrels. Midwest inventories and Rocky Mountain/West Coast inventories both increased by 0.1 million barrels. Propylene non-fuel-use inventories represented 3.0% of total propane inventories.

RESIDENTIAL HEATING FUEL PRICE SURVEY BEGINS THIS WEEK

Beginning this week and continuing through the end of March 2015, prices for wholesale and residential heating oil and propane will be included in This Week in Petroleum, and on EIA’s Heating Oil and Propane Update web page. As of October 13, 2014, residential heating oil prices averaged $3.52 per gallon, which is almost 33 cents per gallon lower than last year at the same time. The average wholesale heating oil price for the start of the 2014-2015 heating season is $2.67 per gallon, nearly 44 cents per gallon lower when compared to the same time last year.

Residential propane prices entered the 2014-2015 heating season at an average of about $2.30 per gallon, 4 cents per gallon lower than one year ago. Starting this season, residential propane prices will be collected for 38 states, an increase of 14 states from previous years. This may affect comparisons with previous years. Wholesale propane prices averaged nearly $1.12 per gallon, over 13 cents per gallon lower than the October 14, 2013 price.

The post Role Of Benchmarks In Global Crude Oil Market – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By David S. Addington

The spread of the Ebola virus raises substantial public health concerns in the United States and abroad. With the proper leadership and use of available resources, the U.S. can address these concerns effectively. Appropriate U.S. government humanitarian assistance to address the Ebola situation in West Africa, and measured and coordinated deployment at home of federal, state, and local capabilities to combat Ebola, can save many lives.

Ebola Virus Disease. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) the symptoms of Ebola include (1) fever greater than 101.5 degrees Fahrenheit, (2) severe headache, (3) muscle pain, (4) weakness, (5) diarrhea, (6) vomiting, (7) abdominal pain, and (8) unexplained bleeding. The CDC reports that those who contract Ebola exhibit symptoms, on average, eight to 10 days after exposure to Ebola, but notes that symptoms may first appear as early as two days or as late as 21 days after exposure.[1]

The CDC advises that Ebola transmission to a human occurs through direct contact with (1) blood or body fluids such as saliva, sweat, semen, urine, feces, vomit, and breast milk, (2) virus-contaminated objects such as needles and syringes, or (3) infected animals. The CDC emphasizes that Ebola does not spread through the air, through water, or, generally, by food.[2] Also, the CDC notes that those who recover from Ebola can no longer spread the virus (except that Ebola virus has been found in semen for up to three months after recovery) and have antibodies in their immune system that help resist Ebola for at least 10 years thereafter.[3]

For practical advice on avoiding Ebola, the CDC encourages, among other things, careful hygiene, including handwashing with soap and water or alcohol-based sanitizer, and avoidance of contact with blood or body fluids of an individual with Ebola, which may occur, for example, through contact with clothes, bedding, needles, medical, equipment, or the live body or remains of an individual with Ebola.[4] As part of its campaign to educate the public, the CDC has published a simple two-page document titled “What You Need to Know About Ebola” available for downloading from the Internet.[5] The document notes that about half of the people who have contracted Ebola in the current outbreak have died.

Humanitarian Aid Abroad Helps Protect the Homeland. The United States has a long history of providing humanitarian assistance to foreign countries or populations in many natural disasters, to help them avoid or mitigate human suffering.[6] The U.S. sometimes provides such assistance alone, but more often acts in cooperation with other countries, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations. The U.S. often provides humanitarian assistance simply as a matter of moral leadership or good relations with a foreign country. In some situations, however, the U.S. also has a direct national interest at stake, as occurs when U.S. assistance to a foreign country fighting a disease outbreak both meets humanitarian needs in that country and constitutes the first line of defense in preventing or reducing the spread of the disease (such as Ebola) to the American people.

As of October 9, 2014, the U.S. government listed three countries, all in West Africa, as having widespread transmission of Ebola: Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. In addition, the government listed one country, also in West Africa, as having localized transmission of Ebola: Nigeria (in Lagos and Port Harcourt). Finally, the government listed two countries as having travel-associated cases of Ebola: Senegal (in Dakar) and the United States (Dallas).[7] The CDC also acknowledges a confirmed case of Ebola in Spain.[8] As of October 8, 2014, the World Health Organization reported 8,399 confirmed, probable, and suspected cases of Ebola virus disease in the seven currently affected countries and 4,033 deaths.[9]

The U.S. government has responded with extensive humanitarian assistance in West Africa in response to the Ebola situation, with aid ranging from treatment units, to mobile testing labs, to personal protective equipment for medical personnel.[10] In addition to the activities of U.S. Agency for International Development personnel and other U.S. agency civilians often involved in providing humanitarian assistance in medical disasters, the President also directed deployment of elements of the U.S. armed forces to assist. Such assistance reportedly will include deployment of an estimated 3,000 members of the U.S. armed forces, to establish in Liberia a regional headquarters for military support to U.S. assistance activities, facilitate transportation of supplies and personnel, construct Ebola treatment units, and train health care personnel.[11]

Protecting the American People at Home. The United States has dealt with significant threats to public health many times, from the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia in the autumn of 1793, to the national influenza pandemic in 1918, to the human immunodeficiency virus epidemic that began in the 1980s.[12] Federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments and the private sector have planned together and work together to address threats of communicable disease.[13]

State, local, territorial, tribal and private sector medical personnel constitute the first responders to a serious communicable disease outbreak when it occurs in the United States.[14] Health care providers must report occurrences of certain serious diseases to state, local, territorial, or tribal public health officials, who in turn report occurrences of specified diseases, including viral hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola, through the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) to the CDC. The NNDSS allows the CDC to develop and share information concerning disease outbreaks and to advise officials responsible for making decisions about responses to outbreaks.[15]

If situations arise with respect to outbreaks that state, local, territorial, and tribal health authorities cannot satisfactorily address, the federal government can exercise broad legal authorities to address the situations. The authority of the Surgeon General of the United States, who heads the U.S. Public Health Service, includes the power to issue, with the approval of the Secretary of HHS, “such regulations as in his judgment are necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the States or possessions, or from one State or possession into any other State or possession,” regulations which may go so far in certain circumstances as to involve apprehension and detention of individuals.[16] The Surgeon General also has authority to issue regulations, with the President’s approval, to exclude introduction into the U.S. of persons or property from a foreign country when the Surgeon General determines that “by reason of the existence of any communicable disease in a foreign country there is serious danger of the introduction of such disease into the United States, and that this danger is so increased by the introduction of persons or property from such country that a suspension of the right to introduce such persons and property is required in the interest of the public health….”[17] The law imposes criminal penalties for violating the Surgeon General’s regulations.[18] The Surgeon General has issued regulations implementing the statutory authority.[19]

Other federal agencies may exercise statutory authority available to them in emergencies to assist in combatting the spread of disease. For example, the Food and Drug Administration of HHS issued an emergency use authorization for an in vitro diagnostic device for the detection of the Ebola Zaire virus detected in the West Africa outbreak in 2014 under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.[20] Similarly, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority of HHS exercised its statutory authority to provide funding to Mapp Pharmaceuticals, Inc., of San Diego, California, to accelerate work on a potential treatment for Ebola.[21] The Bureau of Customs and Border Protection of the Department of Homeland Security, working with the CDC, has implemented screening for possible Ebola exposure of travelers from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone arriving at any of the five airports that serve as the entry points for 94 percent of the travelers entering the U.S. from West Africa.[22]

Conclusion: Timely Collection of Information, Professionalism in Response, and Public Dissemination of Information Will Help Protect the American People. As federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal health authorities continue to work together to assess and respond to Ebola risks in the U.S., and U.S. civilian agencies and the U.S. armed forces work with foreign governments and non-governmental organizations to alleviate suffering and prevent the spread of Ebola in West Africa, senior government officials in the U.S. have important roles. Those at the highest levels of responsibility in the U.S. Congress and executive branch should keep themselves fully informed on the health and economic consequences of the Ebola outbreak so they can help ensure (1) effective and efficient use of the substantial U.S. taxpayer funds involved, (2) that the professionals with the requisite training at all levels of government work together effectively, and (3) that the public is kept accurately informed in a timely manner. Both at home and abroad, and at all levels of government, the dissemination of accurate, understandable information about the Ebola situation, and about government and private responses to it, is crucial.

—David S. Addington is the Group Vice President for Research of The Heritage Foundation.

Notes:
[1] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Ebola (Ebola Virus Disease): Signs and Symptoms,” available at http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/symptoms/index.html (visited Oct. 9, 2014). See also World Health Organization, Fact Sheet No. 103, “Ebola Virus Disease,” available at http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/en/ (visited Oct. 10, 2014).

[2] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Ebola (Ebola Virus Disease): Transmission,” available at http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/transmission/index.html (visited Oct. 9, 2014).

[3] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Ebola (Ebola Virus Disease): Transmission,” available at http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/transmission/index.html (visited Oct. 9, 2014) (“Once someone recovers from Ebola, they can no longer spread the virus. However, Ebola virus has been found in semen for up to 3 months. People who recover from Ebola are advised to abstain from sex or use condoms for 3 months.”); Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Ebola (Ebola Virus Disease): Signs and Symptoms,” available at http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/symptoms/index.html (visited Oct. 9, 2014) (“Recovery from Ebola depends on good supportive clinical care and the patient’s immune response. People who recover from Ebola infection develop antibodies that last for at least 10 years.”).

[4] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Prevention,” available at http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/prevention/index.html (visited Oct. 9, 2014).

[5] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “What You Need to Know About Ebola,” available at http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/pdf/what-need-to-know-ebola.pdf (visited Oct. 9, 2014).

[6] The U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) has principal responsibility within the U.S. government for leading and coordinating U.S. assistance in response to disasters abroad. USAID, OFDA, “Who We Are,” available at http://www.usaid.gov/who-we-are/organization/bureaus/bureau-democracy-conflict-and-humanitarian-assistance/office-us (visited Oct. 10, 2014).

[7] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “2014 Ebola Outbreak in West Africa,” available at http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/2014-west-africa/distribution-map.html#areas (visited Oct. 9, 2014).

[8] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Outbreak Update: October 8, 2014,” available at http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/2014-west-africa/index.html (visited Oct. 10, 2014).

[9] World Health Organization, “WHO: Ebola Response Roadmap Update” (Oct. 10, 2014), available at http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/136161/1/roadmapupdate10Oct14_eng.pdf?ua=1 (visited Oct. 10, 2014).

[10] The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, “FACT SHEET: The U.S. Response to the Ebola Epidemic in West Africa” (Oct. 6, 2014), available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/10/06/fact-sheet-us-response-ebola-epidemic-west-africa (visited Oct. 10, 2014).

[11] The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, “FACT SHEET: U.S. Response to the Ebola Epidemic in West Africa” (Sept. 16, 2004), available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/16/fact-sheet-us-response-ebola-epidemic-west-africa (visited Oct. 10, 2014). A Defense News Activity report of October 8, 2014, stated that “[a]s many 4,000 U.S. military personnel are expected to be deployed in Liberia as part of Operation United Assistance, the military mission supporting U.S. and international efforts to stop the spread of a virus that has already killed more than 3,300 people across the region,” which may indicate that the number of military personnel the U.S. plans to deploy to West Africa to help fight Ebola has increased since the White House Press Office announced on September 16, 2014, that the number of military personnel deployed would be 3,000. Nick Simeone, Defense Media Activity, Department of Defense, “Obama Meets at Pentagon With Hagel, Military Commanders,” available at http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=123372 (visited October 10, 2014).

[12] Richard Norton Smith, Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1993, pp. 178-186 (yellow fever claimed the lives of 10% of the Philadelphia population, p. 186); John M. Barry, The Great Influenza, New York: Penguin Books, 2004 (estimated 675,000 died of the 1918 H1N1 influenza virus, pp. 115 and 450); Healthline.com, “10 Worst Outbreaks in History,” medically reviewed by George T. Krucik, MD (January 20, 2013)(visited Oct. 10, 2014). See Harvard University, “Contagion: Historical Views of Diseases and Epidemics,” available at http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/contagion/index.html (visited Oct. 10, 2014).

[13] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response, Division of State and Local Readiness, Fact Sheet CS 213705, available at http://www.cdc.gov/phpr/documents/DSLR_fact_sheet.pdf (May 2014) (visited Oct. 10, 2014). The Secretary of HHS has broad statutory authority to assist state and local authorities, and to obtain assistance from state and local authorities, in performing the Secretary’s public health functions under section 311 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 243).

[14] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “A National Strategic Plan for Public Health Preparedness and Response” (September 2011), p. 1, available at http://www.cdc.gov/phpr/publications/A_Natl_Strategic_Plan_for_Preparedness.htm (visited Oct. 10, 2014).

[15] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System,” http://wwwn.cdc.gov/nndss/document/NNDSS_Fact_Sheet_FINAL_3_13_2014.pdf (March 13, 2014) (visited Oct. 10, 2014). The federal government also has assisted in establishing four medical facilities specially designed to deal with serious infectious diseases. For information on the biocontainment patient care unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska, see http://www.nebraskamed.com/biocontainment-unit; on the specially built isolation unit at Emory University Hospital, in Atlanta, Georgia, see http://www.medicine.emory.edu/news/2014/08/emory-ebola-patients-frequently-asked-questions-news.html; on the care and isolation unit at St. Patrick’s Hospital in Missoula, Montana, see http://montana.providence.org/news/press-releases/2014/09/providence-st-patrick-hospital-provides-specially-equipped-care-and-isolation-unit-news/ and George F. Risi et al., “Preparing a Community Hospital to Manage Work-related Exposures to Infectious Agents in BioSafety Level 3 and 4 Laboratories,” Emerging Infectious Diseases, Vol. 16, No. 3 (March 2010), available at http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/16/3/pdfs/09-1485.pdf; and on the Special Clinical Studies Unit at the National Institutes for Health in Bethesda, Maryland, see http://clinicalcenter.nih.gov/translational-research-resources/resources/special_clinical_studies.html (all visited Oct. 15, 2014).

[16] Section 361(a) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 264).

[17] Section 362 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 265).

[18] Section 368 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 271).

[19] Subchapter F of Chapter 1 of title 42 of the Code of Federal Regulations. Among other things, the regulations address the detention, isolation, and quarantine of individuals to prevent the spread of diseases (42 CFR 70.6) and the isolation, quarantine, or surveillance of persons arriving in the U.S. infected with or exposed to a disease designated by the President by Executive Order (42 CFR 71.32). The President has satisfied the elements of the Surgeon General’s statutory authority dependent upon presidential designation of diseases with Executive Order 13295 of April 4, 2003, as amended, which designates Ebola.

[20] Food and Drug Administration, “Authorization for Emergency Use of an In Vitro Diagnostic Device for Detection of Ebola Zaire Virus,” 79 Fed. Reg. 55804 (September 17, 2014).

[21] Department of Health and Human Services, Press Release, “HHS contracts with Mapp Biopharmaceutical to Develop Ebola Drug” (September 2, 2014), available at http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2014pres/09/20140902b.html (visited Oct. 10, 2014).

[22] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Press Release, “Enhanced Ebola Screening to Start at Five U.S. Airports and New Tracking Program for all People Entering U.S. from Ebola-affected Countries” available at http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/p1008-ebola-screening.html (visited Oct. 10, 2014). The five airports involved are in New York-Kennedy, Washington-Dulles, Newark-Liberty, Chicago-O’Hare, and Atlanta-Hartsfield.

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Islamist militant group Boko Haram and the Nigerian government have agreed to a cease-fire.

Nigerian Chief of Defense Staff Alex Badeh issued an order Friday, telling all service chiefs “to comply with the cease-fire agreement between Nigeria and Boko Haram in all theaters of operations.”

The text went out after Danladi Ahmadu, who calls himself the secretary-general of Boko Haram, told VOA that a cease-fire agreement had been reached.

Earlier, Ahmadu and a close advisor to Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, Ambassador Hassan Tukur, told VOA that the sides were holding talks in Saudi Arabia, aided Chadian President Idriss Deby and high-level officials from Cameroon.

Those talks also focused on the release more than 200 girls abducted by Boko Haram six months ago. There was no immediate word on the fate of the girls.

Ahmadu, who said he is at a location on the Nigerian-Chadian border, said the girls are “in good condition and unharmed.”

On April 14, dozens of Boko Haram fighters stormed a secondary school in the remote northeastern village of Chibok, kidnapping around 270 girls. Fifty-seven managed to escape.

Boko Haram leader “Abubakar Shekau” later threatened to sell the remainder as slave brides, vowing they would not be released until militant prisoners were freed from jail.

Ahmadu would not elaborate on the conditions under which the girls would be freed. The Saudi government is not involved in the negotiations.

Nigerian President Jonathan has been criticized at home and abroad for his slow response to the kidnapping and for the inability of Nigerian troops to quell the violence by the militants, seen as the biggest security threat to Africa’s top economy and leading energy producer.

Boko Haram has said it is fighting to establish an Islamic state in Muslim-majority northern Nigeria.

The group has launched scores of attacks in the past five years, targeting markets, bus stations, government facilities, churches and even mosques. Militants recently took over some towns in the northeast for what the group’s leader said would be an Islamic caliphate.

The Nigerian military says the man who appeared in Boko Haram videos as Abubakar Shekau was actually an impostor, and that the real Shekau was killed several years ago.

It says the impostor was killed last month during a battle in the town of Konduga. A new video of the man appeared a few days later but the military has stood by its assertion that the Boko Haram leader is dead.

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Islamic State militants in Syria are training Iraqi pilots who joined the group to fly in three captured fighter jets, Reuters reported citing witnesses.

“They have trainers, Iraqi officers who were pilots before for [former Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein,” said Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). “People saw the flights. They went up many times from the airport.”

The “same resources” have told SOHR activists that the Islamist fighters seized three aircrafts after taking control over the military airports in Aleppo and al Raqqa provinces.

The group has reportedly been flying the planes over a captured Syrian al-Jarrah military airbase in the northern Aleppo province, which was among the areas in Syria seized by islamists this year.

“The training courses are given in the airbase of al-Jarrah known by Kshish airbase too. This airbase located in the eastern countryside of Aleppo and considered the most important camp for IS in Syria,” SOHR said.

The jets “flying at a low altitude over the area”, which witnesses said defined as MiG 21 or MiG 23 models, were captured from the Syrian military. It was not clear whether or not they were equipped with weaponry.

“It is worth mentioning that it is not the first time that the people witness an aircraft flying at a low altitude after taking off from al-Jarrah airbase,” SOHR said.

The US Central Command has said in a statement that it is not “aware” of any flight operations by the Islamic militants neither in Syria, nor elsewhere, Reuters reported.

“We’re not aware of ISIS conducting any flight operations in Syria or elsewhere,” said Central Command spokesman Colonel Patrick Ryder.

IS militants have gained momentum by capturing vast territories in Syria and Iraq. A US-led coalition launched airstrikes on the jihadists’ positions in Syria in September without a UN Security Council resolution. This was in addition to the US airstrikes that had been carried out in Iraq since August.

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By Ramadan Al Sherbini

Two bombs on Thursday went off outside a major mosque in a Delta city, injuring at least 11 people, state television reported.

The explosions, caused by home-made bombs, occurred outside a restaurant near the famous Al Sayyed Al Badawi Mosque in the northern city of Tanta, according to the broadcaster.

The blasts took place as hundreds of Egyptians were gathering in the area to celebrate the birthday of a 13th century Muslim saint buried in a shrine inside the mosque.

The festival was not affected by the bombings, local media said.

Explosives experts defused a third bomb in the area.

The blasts came two days after a bomb exploded near a courthouse in central Cairo wounding 13 civilians.

Egypt has experienced a series of attacks, targeting mainly security forces since the army deposed Islamist president Mohammad Morsi in mid-2013.

The government has blamed the violence on Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood and declared it a terrorist organization.

Original article

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Thousands of Palestinians performed prayers in the streets and alleyways of the Old City of Jerusalem on Friday after men under the age of 50 were prevented by Israeli authorities from entering the al-Aqsa mosque compound.

Hundreds of Israeli border guards, police, and special forces were deployed throughout Jerusalem streets, in addition to at least one drone and a surveillance balloon in the sky as authorities sought to prevent Muslim worshipers from reaching the holy site.

Crowds performed prayers in the streets of the many Palestinian neighborhoods that lead out from the Old City including Ras al-Amud, Wadi al-Jouz, Salah al-Din, and al-Musrara.

Israeli forces detained two Palestinians in the Damascus Gate area after assaulting them, a member of the Arab Palestinian Front office, Said Shweiki, told Ma’an.

He identified the detainees as Marwan Majed Shweiki, 22, and Muhammad Nasser Shweiki, 22.

In Ras al-Amud neighborhood, meanwhile, Israeli forces fired stun grenades at worshipers as they finished prayers in order to disperse them, while Palestinians responded by throwing rocks at soldiers.

Tensions also soared in the Wadi al-Jouz area as Israeli forces deployed heavily in the alleyways of the neighborhood and Palestinian youths threw rocks and fireworks at soldiers.

Clashes erupted in the al-Issawiya neighborhood near the Hebrew University in East Jerusalem as well.

Around 3,000 worshipers were able to perform Friday prayers inside the Al-Aqsa mosque as a result of the Israeli restrictions, but a majority of them were elderly men and women.

Witnesses said that Israeli forces assaulted young worshipers as they attempted to enter the Old City through Damascus Gate to pray morning prayers earlier on Friday, and as a result dozens of Palestinians performed morning prayers at the gates surrounding the compound.

The clashes on Friday follow days of tensions between Israeli forces and Muslim worshipers as authorities have repeatedly limited access to the holy site amid the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.

Clashes have broken out and dozens have been detained as Israeli police escorted Israeli Jewish groups to the site while preventing Muslims from entering. The groups include a number of Israeli leaders who have expressed their desire to tear down the Al-Aqsa Mosque and build a temple in its place.

On Wednesday alone, 17 Palestinians were detained in clashes with Israeli police forces around the compound.

Palestinian security guards at the Al-Aqsa mosque organized a sit-in in the mosque courtyard on Friday in solidarity with a guard who was among those detained by Israeli police.

Muhannad Idris, 30, was detained on Tuesday after being assaulted while on duty, and Israeli authorities said he would be released at 6:00 p.m. after being forced to pay 1,000 shekel bail and a third-party bail of 5,000 shekels.

As part of his release he was also banned from entering Al-Aqsa and sentenced to 10 days of house arrest.

The arrest provoked outrage among guards and officials at the compound.

Director of the Al-Aqsa compound Sheikh Omar al-Kiswani told Ma’an condemned the continuous attacks on guards of the mosque, adding: “Israel is systematically attacking the guards of Al-Aqsa as an attempt to scare them from doing their job inside the courtyard.”

Al-Kiswani said that the guards are the first line of defense for Al-Aqsa.

Because of the sensitive nature of the Al-Aqsa compound, Israel maintains a compromise with the Islamic trust that controls it to not allow non-Muslim prayers in the area.

Israeli forces regularly escort Jewish visitors to the site, leading to tension with Palestinian worshipers.

The compound, which sits just above the Western Wall plaza, houses both the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosque and is the third holiest site in Islam.

It is also venerated as Judaism’s most holy place as it sits where Jews believe the First and Second Temples once stood. The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

Al-Aqsa is located in East Jerusalem, a part of the internationally recognized Palestinian territories that have been occupied by the Israeli military since 1967.

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A review of French economist Thomas Piketty’s best-selling book “Capital in the 21st Century” by the world’s richest man is too delicious to ignore. The main takeaway from Piketty’s book, of course, is that we need to worry about the growing concentration of capital, in which people like Microsoft co-founder turned megaphilanthropist Bill Gates and his children will control the bulk of society’s wealth. Gates, however, doesn’t quite see it this way.

From his evidence, he actually has a good case. If the issue is the superrich passing their wealth to their children, who will become the next generation’s superrich, he is right to point out that the biographies of the Fortune 400 — the richest 400 Americans — don’t seem to support this concern. We find many people like Gates, who started life as the merely wealthy (his father was a prosperous corporate lawyer), who parlayed their advantages in life into enormous fortunes. The ones who inherited their vast wealth are the exception, not the rule.

Gates tells readers of his plans to give away the bulk of his fortune. His children will have to get by with the advantages that accrue to the children of the ultrarich, along with whatever fraction of his estate he opts to give them. That will undoubtedly ensure that Gates’ kids enjoy a far more comfortable life than the bottom 99 percent can expect, but it likely will not guarantee a place among the Fortune 400.

As he points out, many of his fellow billionaires feel the same way about passing on their wealth. This means that we may not need to fear the perpetuation of great fortunes through generations as Piketty warns.

However, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t fear rising inequality. Gates gives us a textbook example of the problems. While he is undoubtedly smart and hardworking, the key to his incredible wealth was the decision by the Justice Department largely to ignore antitrust law. Gates used classic anti-competitive practices to gain and protect a near monopoly in the market for personal computer operating systems.

When the Justice Department finally brought suit in 1998, Bill Gates and the Microsoft team were so arrogant and dishonest that they managed to turn the presiding judge, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, into an enemy. An appellate court later removed him from the case for bias.

While Gates wants us to believe that his software innovations were a great service to the world, most users of his software would probably not agree. His efforts to corner the market may have made him rich, but they slowed down the process of software development.

Bill Gates further defends wealth inequality by pointing out his philanthropy. Interestingly, the philanthropy that he says makes the situation better could actually make it worse.

Unfortunately, he is not the only one who got rich largely at the expense of the economy and society. The Fortune 400 is full of Wall Street investment bankers who make their money by trading a few minutes or milliseconds ahead of everyone else. This means that they pocket profits that otherwise might have gone to long-term investors. And of course, the Wall Street gang also includes those who made money on the mortgage-backed securities that nearly destroyed the world economy in 2008.

The fortune of the Walton family — Walmart’s largest shareholders and heirs to the wealth the company created — came in large part from being able to hire supercheap labor both in the United States and the rest of the world. Suppose that we had full employment policies that gave people a choice of jobs or that workers’ right to unionize was taken more seriously by legislators and courts. It’s unlikely that many workers would have then opted for low pay and few benefits as a Walmart “associate.”

And then there is Jeff Bezos, who made Amazon into one of the largest companies in the world in large part by avoiding state sales taxes.

To be sure, there are people in the Fortune 400 who had great innovations that provided a genuine service to humanity, but they are the exception. As the old saying goes, behind every great fortune lies a great crime.

Gates further defends wealth inequality by pointing out his philanthropy. Interestingly, the philanthropy that he says makes the situation better could actually make it worse.

Take patent monopolies, one of the largest distortions in the market today. Each year they redistribute hundreds of billions of dollars upward while making lifesaving drugs very expensive. (Think of the hepatitis C drug Sovaldi, which is being sold for $84,000 for a 12-week course of treatment. The generic version sells for $900.)

A program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation once told me in unambiguous terms that people there don’t talk about patents. When I expressed surprise, she explained the reason was the nature of its founder’s fortune.

Bill Gates may do much to make drugs available to the developing world. But if his foundation obstructs the development of more efficient mechanisms than patents for financing drug research, he may well end up making the situation worse rather than better. After all, it’s nice that he is making it easier for poor people to get expensive drugs, but the real problem is that the drugs are expensive in the first place. That would not be the case without patent protection.

While philanthropy may prevent the direct inheritance of most multibillion-dollar fortunes, the charitable giving of billionaires is unlikely to go to efforts that could undermine the basis of their wealth or their peers’. We may not need to fear that the next generations’ Fortune 400 will all be descendants of this generation’s billionaires, but we do have to fear that the rules will continue to be rigged so that this group and its lackeys in the 1 percent continue to control the bulk of the country’s wealth. That is not a pretty picture, even if it is not the nightmare Piketty warns of.

This column was originally published at Al Jazeera and is reprinted with permission.

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Neil Thompson is convinced that the West should not involve itself in those states where political Islam is a major force. As he sees it, religious groups should be left to expose their own shortcomings, which should then help revive the local spread of democracy in the Middle East.

By Neil Thompson

When many Westerners think of the Middle East today they tend to see a region gripped by religious and sectarian violence. Within Sunni Islam there is a struggle over religious authenticity, while secular governments in places like Egypt, Algeria and Syria face armed opposition to their rule by Islamist extremists. Meanwhile, much of the violence in long-running civil wars has taken on a sectarian nature, both between different strands of Islam and against religious minorities. Sometimes this has been encouraged as a deliberate divide-and-rule strategy by embattled regimes and, as in the case of Syria, the categories often overlap. What all the conflicts are perceived to have in common is the participation of inflexible and fanatical groups of fighters dogmatically opposed to the further modernization and Westernization of their home countries.

Should any of these groups seize power, it is feared that they will impose a backwards-looking theocratic form of governance across the spaces that they dominate, and will trample on the human rights of vulnerable groups such as religious minorities or women. The panacea for this in the eyes of many Western citizens is to temper religious fervor by separating it from politics and implementing a secular and liberal democratic system of government. However, no Middle Eastern state has yet to obtain such a system by its own efforts, while Western attempts to enact nation-building have so far ended in failure. Consequently, Western policymakers have tended to back authoritarian governments as a bulwark against fundamentalist rule.

The chronic weakness of state authority in the Middle East, coupled with the flourishing of extremist movements, once helped to maintain this ‘strongman’ model of governance. Yet, even in the face of political Islam’s enduring appeal in Muslim societies, this strategy is now regarded at best as a stop-gap measure rather than a long-term solution to the region’s myriad problems. The default Western response to this double-sided problem has been to propose the transfer of functions performed by some religious organizations (for example healthcare) over to a stronger state. Under this scenario, religious groups would cease to perform political functions and the state would guarantee their freedom to practice their beliefs without interference. Islamic movements are thus seen as an obstacle to better state capability as well as challengers to its monopoly on force and violence. As a consequence, attempts by local rulers or outsiders, to modernize, secularize and centralize the Middle East have quite often resulted in a religious backlash.

Towards Religious Democracies

But what if the West’s secular state model is a merely a product of its own historically violent struggles with modernity in the 17th century? Up until this point in time, the very idea that religious authority should have no place in the political system of a European state would have been controversial to say the least – just as it is in parts of the modern day Middle East. But the creation of democratic systems in Indonesia and Turkey help to disprove the notion that Muslim or Middle Eastern cultures are incapable of living under systems of governance inextricably linked to the West.

For the likes of Turkey and Tunisia, democratic transformation occurred after decades of secularist dictatorship or military coups. The price for Islamist participation in the political process was the promise not to pursue a theocratic or one-party model of government once in power. Only then did both the secular and religious sections of these societies agree to be bound by the results of future elections. By contrast, when Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood gambled that they could rule alone through electoral majoritarianism, they lost and a more familiar form of government returned.

These scenarios, in turn, suggest that while the Middle East’s secularists cannot keep the influence of Islamist organizations completely in check, Islamists are seemingly unable to monopolize power without resorting to the same type of oppression that discredited their republican or monarchical enemies. In this respect, democratic elections might offer a third path. However, developing organic and sustainable democratic processes undoubtedly takes time. Indeed, the collapse of Libya and Iraq as functioning states shows that removing a dictator does not immediately create the conditions for political transformation. If anything, the ongoing travails within these countries helps to reinforce that the Middle East has been through a whirlwind of political ferment since decolonization began a mere five or six decades ago – a predicament that bears some resemblance to the century of nation-building associated with German or Italian unification.

And when it comes to nation-building in Europe, it must also be remembered that political change in the West has quite often been violent and inconsistent. Even the most pacific Western democracies are less than a hundred years old. Indeed, at two hundred and thirty-eight years old, the United States could be viewed as a venerable patriarch. Accordingly, we should not distort the growth of groups like Islamic State as an inevitable consequence of political Islam’s rise to power once a secular dictatorship is removed. It should also be remembered that most Islamist movements remain locally-focused in their political objectives and have condemned violence as a political tool.

Stop Taking Sides

The emergence of democratic states in other parts of the Islamic world suggests that they can also emerge in Arab and Middle Eastern states. However, it is also highly likely that any indigenous political group that attains significant popularity under these systems will be influenced by Islam. This is in much the same way as many Western political parties are influenced by Christian frameworks and assumptions, such as Germany’s Christian Democratic Union. And just as Western politicians have to be in favor of ideals such as “freedom” or “democracy“, leaders in Muslim-majority countries also have to appeal to the core values of their societies. Invoking Islam is both a legitimizing measure and a short-cut to the communication of ideas. Even secular Middle Eastern political parties will have observant members.

Most Islamist movements also offer programs of action that do not necessarily threaten the West. For example, the Muslim Brotherhood’s determination to secure power via democratic processes diverges with the aims of groups like IS or Al-Qaida’s Syrian franchise Jabhat al-Nusra. Consequently, the West’s ‘tolerance’ of the removal of elected Islamist political movements by force could be regarded as a strategic blunder that has helped to encourage jihadist narratives of victimization. The recent killing of al-Shabaab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane is a case in point. While this Somali militant group’s profile has undoubtedly increased over the past few years, it could be argued that its rise to prominence was facilitated by the overthrow of its more locally-focused predecessor in a US-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. By being seen to take sides in inter-Muslim disputes and colluding against fundamentalists with their local enemies, the West might have indirectly encouraged more extreme forms of Islamism.

Democratic Islamism Will Lead to Accountability

It might even have been wiser to leave these movements alone so that they can discredit themselves locally, much like the Iranian or Sudanese regimes have over the years. In this respect, have Tehran and Khartoum behaved any worse than the Soviet Union, Cultural Revolution-era China or today’s Gulf monarchies? It’s a question worth thinking about, given that the West managed to co-exist (or even aligned) with all these governments for decades. Indeed, China’s example shows that the need to tackle mounting social problems slowly brings out the pragmatism in the most extreme of movements. Even an Islamic movement in power inevitably leans to pragmatism as part of its bid to survive in government. Since 2002, the mildly Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) has dominated Turkey’s domestic politics not because of its iron grip on culture and society, but mainly because it delivered on solid economic growth. This, in turn, gave it the legitimacy to defang Turkey’s coup-prone army, a feat that no previous elected government had managed to achieve.

Indeed, elections offer a fresh source of legitimacy for groups that have become popular through religious advocacy or offering social services. They provide a future goal around which supporters can be mobilized. Revolutionary parties which have relied on battlefield victories for their legitimacy have to adapt or lose ground when elections start to become more important. Once Islamic parties have to focus on practical problems such as healthcare and economic growth, they either lose much of their crusading zeal or risk their political credibility and relevance. It’s even possible that Iran might go through such a transformation in the coming decades.

No Quick Fixes

The key to separating religion and government in the region, and therefore creating a stronger Middle Eastern state, might be to tolerate religion governing through the state. By exposing the shortcomings of this model, democracy might consolidate its status faster in the Middle East as its political elites lose another vehicle for mobilizing public support. Electorally successful Islamic parties will moderate and their methodologies will be copied elsewhere. Consequently, it might be better if the West practiced a policy of pragmatic disengagement towards those countries now electing Islamist political parties. If it neither helps nor hinders the process of change, it cannot be held responsible for the outcome. This strategy is not a quick fix for the problems of the Middle East today, but it might be among the most enduring.

Neil Thompson is researcher for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and an Editor and contributor to the Future Foreign Policy Group. He holds an MA in International Relations of East Asia from the University of Durham.

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